First sight: Part one, a model of psi and the mind

Journal of Parapsychology, The, Fall, 2004 by James C. Carpenter

I am sketching a model with two major aspects: a model of the mind and its functioning in the world, and a model of psi and its functioning within the context of the mind. I begin with a basic premise about the nature of psi and its place in mental functioning and then describe an approach to understanding the mind in which psi functioning can be seen to have a sensible place. The model I propose is psychological, because it appears that most of parapsychology's more robust findings are psychological in nature, and it is these findings that most need to be understood and extended. Therefore, it will be the interface between parapsychology and general psychology, and not the various other fields of science, that will be of most interest here.

PSI AND THE MIND

Basic Premise About the Nature of Psi

ESP is the leading edge of the mind's ability to move to the next experience; PK is the leading edge of the mind's ability to move the next effect to its intention. These psi processes are continuously active but normally unconscious and implicit. Therefore, in terms of this premise, psi is the initial stage of the incipience of experience. This implies that all experience and all intention begin at the psi level of functioning. Psi is not "second sight" but "first sight."

From this perspective, psi processes are not unusual or exotic. They function as the initiating part of the mind's perpetual preconscious working toward the end of constructing its experience and framing its choices. They are quite everyday, and serve as the implicit foundation out of which all experience is formed. How may we conceive of the nature of the mind in a way that will make this understanding of psi functioning sensible?

Historical Context and Alternative Views of the Mind

William James (1890) defined psychology as the study of mental processes. He said that the central problem for psychologists "is that thinking of some sort goes on" (p. 224). He spoke of the stream of consciousness, then immediately pointed out that it was actually more like a pulsing chain of mental events: thought, feeling, memory, thought, perception, feeling, and so on. There is an essential problem here to which parapsychology can contribute in a basic way: How is it that a thought moves to the particular next thing and not some other? At any given moment there are presumably many contending possibilities, even excluding extrasensory events.

A popular model. In the conventional model of the mind in the world, physical processes are the bedrock of reality. (1) Mental events are generated by physical (neurobiological) events. Organisms, including human beings, can be understood as biological machines with clear physical boundaries. Because the nervous system generates consciousness, the reality of mental events is secondary and derivative. Since physical processes produce mental events, these events cannot also be elicited by happenings beyond the physical boundaries of the organism, except inasmuch as their effects somehow impinge upon the sensory system. The laws governing mental processes are mechanical and impersonal in nature. Implicit in this presumption of physiology-generating-mind is the deeper presumption of a reductionistic "hierarchy of the sciences," in which the constructs of physics are seen as reflecting the deepest substrate of reality. From this point of view, the answer to the question about why the particular next thought occurs must be found in the biophysical events that cause that thought to occur.

An alternative model. "Mental" and "physical" are constructions placed upon reality, and neither is presumed to refer to processes more real or basic than the other (Kelly, 1955). The notion of "organism" is itself a construction and the being referred to is not rigidly bounded but at its edges blurs into its surround such that the two are not entirely distinguishable. All conscious processes occur in a context of unconscious or preconscious mental processes, which must be understood in terms of meaning rather than impersonal, biological mechanism. On the contrary, mental processes are primarily goal-directed and personal, including those that are unconscious or "automatic" (Bargh, 1989). At the edge of perception, an organism and its surround lack distinguishable identity. There is a transactional zone in which organism and surround, or self and other, are one another. Each organism is situated at its edges beyond the line of its sensory impingement with physical events, and is responsive to meanings in the larger surround, which is of indefinite extent. From this perspective, the particular next thought occurs because it is chosen by an intentional self using preconscious processes and consulting preconscious (and sometimes extrasensory) information.

Early observations of unconscious processes. At about the same time that James was defining the central problems of psychology, two other important lines of work were beginning that strongly suggested the reality of unconscious mental processes. Jastrow noticed that subjects who believed that they were merely guessing could distinguish the difference between two weights correctly even when the differences were so slight that they were not consciously perceptible (Pierce & Jastrow, 1884). Freud found that with patients like Anna O., inscrutable physical symptoms could be explained and treated if they were seen as a derivative of unconscious emotional conflicts (Freud, 1892/1963). Alongside these observations, mainstream psychology developed a skeptical tradition in which unconscious processes are still viewed with strong suspicion by many.